Understand What Classification Is

Classification

Writing That Puts Things into Groups

Understand What Classification Is

Classification is writing that organizes, or sorts, people or items into categories.

The organizing principle for a classification is how you sort the people or items, not the categories themselves. The organizing principle is directly related to the purpose of your classification. For example, you might sort clean laundry (your purpose) using one of the following organizing principles (how you achieve your purpose) — by ownership (yours, your roommate’s, and so on) or by where it goes (the bedroom, the bathroom).

Four Basics of Good Classification

  1. It makes sense of a group of people or items by organizing them into useful categories.
  2. It has a purpose for sorting the people or items.
  3. It uses a single organizing principle.
  4. It gives detailed examples or explanations of the things that fit into each category.

In the following paragraph, each number corresponds to one of the Four Basics of Good Classification.

All people do not learn in the same way, and 2 it is helpful to know what learning style you prefer. How do you naturally take in and absorb new information? The VARK learning styles inventory is a thirteen-item questionnaire that reveals which 3 learning style a person favors. 1 The first of its four learning styles is visual (V). 4 Visual learners absorb information best by looking at images or by drawing or diagramming a concept. For example, a visual learner may learn more by studying a flowchart of information rather than reading that same information in paragraph form. 1 The second learning style is auditory (A). 4 Auditory learners take in information most efficiently by hearing and listening. They remember information that they hear better than they remember information that they read. Even reading aloud is better than reading silently because hearing is key. Auditory learners benefit from discussion with others rather than working alone silently. 1 The third learning style is read/write (R). 4 Read/write learners learn best by reading written material. They also benefit from writing about what they have read. For example, many read/write learners study by reading and then writing a summary of what they have just read. Many people who are not naturally read/write learners have used that learning style in school because schools are oriented toward reading and writing. For example, a person whose score on the VARK is split evenly between auditory and read/write is probably an auditory learner who has learned to use a read/write learning style for school.1 The final learning style is kinesthetic (K). 4 Kinesthetic learners learn by doing and by being active. For these learners, experiments in science may be easier to understand than reading a chapter in a book, listening to a lecture, or looking at an image. Kinesthetic learners often need to create activity in order to learn well: They may make flash cards, walk around as they study, or make a static activity interactive in some other way. All learners benefit from learning techniques such as highlighting and making notes, though different kinds of notes work for different learning styles. All learners are active learners: They learn best when they actively involve themselves in a task rather than passively observe it. 2 Taking a learning styles inventory is both fun and useful, particularly for students.

Whenever you organize or sort things to make sense of them, you are classifying them. Here are some ways that you might use classification:

COLLEGE In a nursing course, you discuss three types of antibiotics used to treat infections.
WORK For a report on inventory at a software store, you list the types of software carried and report how many of each type you have in stock.
EVERYDAY LIFE You look at the types of payment plans that are available for your car loan.